I love just browsing through Etsy and getting great gift and decorating ideas. I can absolutely spend a whole day lost in Pinterest! There are So many creative people out there and so many unique items. I just love getting new ideas for making things, and I would so much rather buy from them then regular retail stores where everyone buys the same exact things, wouldn’t you?

You can find almost anything on Etsy, from earrings to stained glass windows and everything in between. It makes shopping so much fun!

Check out my latest Treasury List on Etsy. These items are not from my shop, but just some of my fun finds! There are so many cool things, It is hard to narrow it down to just 16 items, but these are my picks for the week!

This weeks Treasury list is all about Fall colors. I love the warmth of color in the fall and I am looking forward to the leaves changing and falling and blowing in the wind. The joy of bonfires and Smores , laughter of good friends and just sitting and enjoying hearing the rain fall. Yep! I’m ready for the heat of summer to slip away on the breeze replaced with sweaters and seeing my breath in the air.

I am so excited to be doing my very first art show! Picking which 3 pieces to place in the show was difficult, very difficult! So I asked my FaceBook friends to help me. I was totally surprised at the response I got. Thanks everyone for your love and support! These were the top three choices. They will be on display at the UVAA “Expose Yourself” exhibit from January 18th through Feb 28th.

OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION will be held Friday, January 18, 2013 from 5 – 7pm. It is free and open to all the exhibiting artists, friends, family and art supporters at UVAA. So please come by and meet me in person if you don’t already know me, and for those of you that do, I would love the support of your smile!

I love it when I can just throw color on a canvas and push it around with a knife! It is so relaxing and exciting to see what comes of it. With no preconceived ideas, just the desire to create something beautiful. This one started to resemble a pond or a swamp at sun set. I don’t know why this one makes me so happy, but just looking at it makes me smile and almost giggle inside. I love it when that happens. I can’t place it, not sure what it is or why it happens, but something things just make me smile. Hope you enjoy it too!

So, we are driving home from church on Sunday; The leaves on the trees are starting to change to their fall colors, making it such a lovely drive home. In a valley full of dark green trees, there in the center stood a beautiful tree with glowing yellow leaves. I point it out to my husband and say “ Isn’t that beautiful?” He says to me “You are a beautiful yellow tree shinning out from amongst green trees!” (YES he talks like that!) I immediately say “OH! Can I be a beautiful RED tree, shinning out from amongst green trees? I like red so much better the yellow.” He says “Sure! I like Red better too!” What a sweet man! ~~~ I love my life!

So about 10 years ago I found some sycamore tree starts out front under our large sycamore tree. I absolutely love our sycamore, so I carefully dug up the starts and planted them in pots. Through the years they got to big for the pots, so a couple years back I planted them in our back yard. I was so happy to think of all the shade my back yard would get in a few years.

Then as they grew bigger, I started to wonder why I hadn’t planted maples instead. They have much prettier fall color and smaller leaves. I started to dread all the work that was ahead of us as I thought of all those leaves. Sycamore leaves do not breakdown quickly and so we have had to rake them every year because the old leaves will lie around for years. I even went through the thought process of thinking about cutting the young trees down and replanting maples. But I really liked that we were finally getting some shade into the back yard, so discarded the thought and decided to be content in the trees that the Lord had given us for free.

This spring something weird happened. There were yellow/green blossoms on our two young sycamore trees. I had never seen anything like this before on our big sycamore. I goggled the question “Do sycamore trees have flowers?” and the answer was yes, so I did think to look for pictures I just brushed it off, as “That is just the weirdest thing that I have never seen the flowers before; But our old tree is very tall and large so maybe the blossoms were at the top and I just couldn’t see them.”

So today I am out watering the flowers around the base of the young trees that are now about 15 ft. tall and I notice that they have the little helicopter seeds like a maple tree. Now that was really weird. I know my sycamore has never had those. It gets ball shaped seeds. So again I turn to Google and start by looking at pictures of the blooms and seeds.

Turns out that my two young sycamores are not sycamore trees at all, but Emerald Queen Norway maple trees. In their description as It reads “the shape of the leaves resemble those of the sycamore tree. LOL

How awesome, that God knew I would want maple trees in my back yard 10 years before I knew I wanted maple trees. God is so very awesome and He cares for every detail of our lives. EVERY DETAIL! ~~~I love my life!

So, A couple of years ago we cut down the cherry tree that was in our back yard. But when the tree went away so did my beloved birds. I quickly planted more trees to create shelter for them, but trees are slow in growing. I hung bird food out for them, but to no avail. Not even my usual sparrows would have anything to do with my yard. It was very sad for me as I love music and the bird’s songs are the most beautiful music on the planet. So Peaceful!

So this year I Put a beautiful birdcage on our back deck and hung the seed inside of it, To protect any little birds from any big birds that might bully them.

I sat at my back window for days, hoping and praying that birds would return. But it just kept raining and raining. Then after several weeks of nothing, one day one single bird came and partook of my grain offering. I told my sister “ I hope he goes and tells all his friends about the beautiful bird cage restaurant.” The next day there were two birds, the next 5. After about a month of the birds being back, I wake this morning to a beautiful serenade from many birds so loud that it sounds like a nature sound track playing.

I open my curtains to see Gold Finches, Sparrows, some unknown black bird with yellow feet and beak and to top it off a pair of Morning Doves. Thank you Jesus for bringing me the desire of my heart!

Psalm 84:3Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, LORD Almighty, my King and my God.~~~ I love my life!